2 Kings 21:10-15
"10 And the Lord said by his servants the prophets, 11 “Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, 12 therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13 And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14 And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, 15 because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.”"
Manasseh's reign seems certainly to have been a crisis-point in God's dealings with Judah, and the long-threatened judgment became a certainty which not even the considerable revival under the good king Josiah, could do more than delay for a few brief years. Indeed, as we shall see later, Josiah's reign was simply the lull before the storm finally broke in all its fury. We note here particularly that the sin of the king brought judgment on the nation as a whole. Not that the nation was dissociated from his wicked ways - far from it - but it is clear that it was he who set the example in evil and dragged a whole people with him. It is true in general, but particularly true of those in positions of responsibility and authority, that no-one lives unto himself. One man, if he has sufficient power - as the kings of Judah and Israel had - can decide a whole nation's destiny. This is why the New Testament lays such stress on praying for those in authority over us (1 Timothy 2:2), for it is they, in this sense, who shape national life for weal or woe. This is a ground both for deep concern and for hope that national life should be so markedly and inevitably influenced by royalty and government, but hope in that both may be even more deeply conditioned by the prayers of God's people. Pray!